Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasnt. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. It is the summer of 1950and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavias family calls home. ( From the publisher.In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder-but protecting her and her sisters from something even worse.Īn enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions-and a rich literary delight. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story-of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school’s tower thirty years before. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.” “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. It is the summer of 1950-and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison.

Sweetness at the bottom